Dick Cheney, a major determine throughout the Republican Celebration who served as vp in the course of the presidency of George W. Bush, has died. Cheney, a mainstay in Republican politics for many years, is primarily seen as one of many main driving forces behind the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, in addition to the ethically and legally doubtful strategies of the U.S.-led conflict on terror.
Longtime Republican political determine
Richard Bruce Cheney served within the administrations of 4 Republican presidents, together with as an aide to financial advisor Donald Rumsfeld in Richard Nixon’s administration and as chief of workers for his successor, Gerald Ford. Cheney additionally represented Wyoming for a decade as its sole member within the Home of Representatives. Cheney left Congress in 1989 to change into secretary of protection for President George H.W. Bush. Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, led the profitable U.S. navy effort within the Persian Gulf Battle in opposition to Iraq. Cheney then left public life to function CEO of the enormous oil providers firm Halliburton. When George W. Bush grew to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2000, Cheney was chosen to steer the seek for his operating mate; Cheney took the function himself and have become vp in 2001. Cheney was seen as an skilled and succesful counterweight to the youthful Bush, who had restricted political expertise, particularly in overseas coverage. Bush recruited a number of of Cheney’s former colleagues to serve in his cupboard, together with Rumsfeld and Powell. Critics alleged that Cheney can be a “shadow president,” figuring out coverage from behind the scenes.
Iraq invasion, the conflict on terror and different controversies
Cheney’s affect got here into focus within the aftermath of the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001. The president was famously making a public look at an elementary faculty in Florida when information of the assaults got here. Cheney was within the White Home and took cost, even issuing an order to shoot down industrial planes if essential to repel additional assaults. After 9/11, Cheney grew to become a number one determine within the neoconservative camp throughout the Bush administration; the “neocons,” as they had been referred to as, advocated an aggressive overseas coverage that included overthrowing governments hostile to the U.S. and its pursuits. Cheney pushed this agenda over the objections of Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Cheney’s coverage of regime change was applied within the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cheney, a number one determine within the Nineties conflict in Iraq and a former businessman with deep connections to the oil trade, was seen as a number one pressure within the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, together with his advocacy for using “enhanced interrogation” methods in opposition to terror suspects, which had been extensively considered to be torture. That was a part of Cheney’s push for an aggressive conflict on terror, which additionally set the stage for elevated racial profiling and police militarization in the USA. Cheney constantly denied that he deliberately pushed false data to justify the Iraq invasion, and he defended the interrogation methods used in the course of the Bush administration. Cheney additionally had extra particular scandals, together with wounding a searching accomplice by unintentionally taking pictures him within the face, in addition to an incident by which Cheney’s chief of workers, Scooter Libby, leaked the identification of a covert CIA operative.
Private life, politics and Trump
Cheney handled heart-related well being points all through his grownup life, in the end present process a coronary heart transplant in 2012. His household mentioned in an announcement that Cheney died of problems from pneumonia, in addition to cardiac and vascular illness. Cheney, born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, attended Yale College however dropped out, later incomes bachelor’s and grasp’s levels from the College of Wyoming-Madison; Cheney additionally prevented navy service in the course of the Vietnam Battle due to his research. Cheney married Lynne Vincent, his highschool girlfriend. The couple had two daughters: Mary, whose private life grew to become political fodder when she married her accomplice, Heather Poe, with assist from the Cheneys regardless of Republican opposition to same-sex marriage; and Elizabeth, who went on to win the congressional seat as soon as held by her father to signify Wyoming within the Home of Representatives. Former Congresswoman Cheney grew to become one of many main Republican voices in opposition to Donald Trump, together with serving as vice chair of the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill rebel. The previous vp was typically important of Democrats; he as soon as referred to former President Barack Obama as “the worst president of my lifetime,” accusing him of being weak on nationwide safety points. Nonetheless, Cheney, like his daughter, grew to become important of Trump after January 6 and supported Vice President Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election.
Regardless of his endorsement of Harris, Cheney remained a villainous political determine within the eyes of many Democrats, who proceed accountable him for the dying and struggling of the Iraq Battle and the conflict on terror. Many Republicans, in the meantime, view him as a number one determine of an administration that engaged in reckless worldwide overreach that harmed U.S. pursuits and standing on the earth. Cheney, regardless of these controversies, remained unapologetic for his selections.
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